The forest is a bit of a nightmare in ASP's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

Sunday

May 7, 2017 at 3:00 PM

By Alexander Stevens, Correspondent

An Oberon who looks like Keith Richards, fairies straight from the set of “Clockwork Orange,” and a Murphy bed that catapults a donkey-man back to reality. It’s all just another performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” courtesy of the fevered imagination of Patrick Swanson.

“I gravitate to the more abstract plays by Shakespeare,” says Swanson, who directs the new Actors’ Shakespeare Company production of “Midsummer,” running May 10 to June 4 at the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge.

But if you think this concept is the product of a director who’s smoking something, you should know that Swanson draws inspiration from director Peter Brook’s legendary 1970 staging of “Midsummer” for the Royal Shakespeare Company. That production was praised for the way it abandoned traditional staging techniques, allowing both actors and audiences to see the play anew.

“It was a game-changing moment in theater for me,” says Swanson, who was raised in England and now lives in Lexington. “I had very little theater experience at that point, but I knew this was something transformational.”

“We have this vision of the forest in ‘Midsummer’ that includes fairies with gossamer wings and the Mendelssohn music,” says Swanson. “But if you look at the way Shakespeare describes the forest, it’s not a particularly friendly place. It’s filled with slimy, creepy things, and spiders and bats. It’s not a pleasant world.”

That’s why his fairies may remind you of “Clockwork Orange.”

“They’re a bit dangerous,” he says.

“Midsummer” occupies a unique place in the Shakespeare canon. Not based on an earlier story or plot, it’s one of the few plays that sprang completely from the playwright’s own imagination.

It also appears that it was supposed to be a light entertainment for an aristocratic wedding, and some believe that Queen Elizabeth may have attended the first performance.

If so, the play is a prime example of Shakespeare’s complex relationship with royalty. While Edmund Spenser wrote an epic poem called “The Faerie Queene” that was clearly designed to glorify Elizabeth, the Fairy Queen in “Midsummer” is Titania, who ends up having sex with a man who has the head of a jackass.

“Two years after Spenser’s piece, Shakespeare writes a play in which the Fairy Queen sleeps with a donkey,” says Swanson. “He was really pushing it.”

“Midsummer” is also notable for its musical opportunities, which is right in the wheelhouse of Swanson, the longtime artistic director of The Revels.

“There will be live music, an electronic box of tricks and looping cellos,” says Swanson. “You can use music to underline themes. The songs in ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ aren’t just entertainment, they’re part of the forward drive of the play.”

When it comes to driving the play forward, nothing will be more important than the cast. Swanson sounds excited about the group he’s assembled.

He says the actors playing the four young lovers are “attractive and enthusiastic – everything you could want in those roles.” And in two key parts, he’s got a couple vets – Paula Plum and Steven Barkhimer.

The two actors recently battled in “Who Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at Lyric Stage, and they’re back at it in “Midsummer,” sparring as Titania and Bottom.

Swanson calls Plum “my favorite diva.” And his praise is just as high for Barkhimer.

“I cast him as Bottom knowing I’d have no idea what would come out of his mouth,” says Swanson. “He’s like Robin Williams – he has a million ideas a minute. [His energy] gives a great boost to everyone.”

Plum and Barkhimer get one of the play’s best comic storylines. Titania has been drugged with love drops that make her fall in love with the first thing she sees, and that turns out to be Bottom, who’s been transformed into an ass.

That’s where the Murphy bed comes in. When Titania is done with Bottom, Swanson envisions the Murphy bed flipping up and taking Bottom with it.

“It’s been a nightmare, frankly,” says Swanson with a laugh, describing the logistics of the bed. “The physics of it are defeating us, at this point.”

It’s unclear whether this flipping bed will be there on opening night, but Swanson knows he’ll have the glorious poetry of a playwright who was just beginning to demonstrate the full breadth of his creative powers.

Not only does Shakespeare offer a dreamy vision of life in which the odd behavior of people – especially people in love – is the result of mischievous sprites who haunt the night, he also wedges in keen observations that we now hold as truths.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” says Lysander.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” says Puck.

“The play works on so many levels, it’s layered like a wedding cake,” says Swanson. “And at the end, Shakespeare strips it all away, and brings it all to this question that’s really quite metaphysical: Are we the dreamers, or are we being dreamed?”

Alexander Stevens is a freelance writer. For more stories about theater, movies, music and art, follow us on Twitter @WickedLocalArts.